Spring, fall, cruise — and now pre-fall. Further proving that earlier is better, at least where retail in the U.S. is concerned, Versace has jumped on the pre-fall bandwagon.
On the heels of a strong spring collection, Donatella Versace has designed her first major pre-fall collection of 50 looks. Underscoring the importance of the U.S. market, the line opened to retailers and press at the house’s Olympic Tower showroom in New York on Monday, and will be shown there for a week. It fleshes out the handful of women’s looks Versace usually puts on the men’s wear runway in Milan in January.
“Today, it’s impossible to operate without pre-collections,” said Versace. “They gained tremendous momentum and have to be commercially fashionable, which is why this collection is the evolution of spring.”
It’s an opportune time for Versace to step on the accelerator. In September, chief executive officer Giancarlo Di Risio disclosed that Gianni Versace SpA has moved into the black again, largely benefiting from several restructuring efforts implemented since his arrival at the house in 2004. That, coupled with the well-received spring runway collection — one of Milan’s best, according to many — has given the house a solid platform to explore new venues of growth.
Patrick Guadagno, president and chief operating officer of wholesale at Versace USA, stressed that Versace’s first pre-fall collection underscores how the company has identified the U.S. as a key market for growth. The U.S. is poised to account for 25 percent of sales in three years. He wouldn’t disclose its current status.
For pre-fall, Versace blew up the abstract and graphic design of American artist Jonathan Lasker, while for solids, she pushed the mills to spotlight texture and movement. Looks included short raffia skirts, nubby wools and cashmere, sheared mink and fox with burned-out details. Colors were on the delicate side with winter white, coffee, rose and grape red. The pencil-thin pieces skimmed the body without clinging to it. “A slim, feather-light cashmere jersey dress topped by a coat or jacket is a modern silhouette for me right now,” said Versace.
For when night descends and the razzle-dazzle quotient ascends, Versace used cascades of shiny sequins assembled in color blocks or splattered all over for a liquid effect.
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Praising the solid collaboration between the design and commercial sides, Guadagno said this collection wanted to better classify the range by item, such as dresses, tops, bottoms and eveningwear. “We’ve also retouched the price list by lowering the first price to have entry level, main and top,” said Guadagno.
Citing dresses as a prime category for Versace, Guadagno said pre-fall will feature jersey dresses that retail for $1,400, rather than starting at $2,000. Jersey tops will range from $625 to $1,500 for embellished versions, but there’s “plenty in-between.”
Versace accessories offerings for pre-fall tripled, with 60 new styles of larger and softer bags in exotics and metallic calfskin. Again, the entry price tag for the bags was lowered to $1,500 versus the previous $2,000. “But we’re obviously not sacrificing quality,” said Guadagno.
The company now will have three deliveries for the fall season: the pre-fall collection, which accounts for 40 percent of the total season and will sell at retail in June and July; the “main” collection, also at 40 percent, which is on the floor in mid-August, and the runway line, which arrives on the retail floor in mid-September at 20 percent of the season’s business.
“Our competitive position was not strong,” Guadagno acknowledged. “We were missing a strong delivery for the first two months of the season. Runway continues to be the true message of the designer, the inspiration. From there comes more direction for the other delivery segments.”
He noted that the seeds for the pre-fall move were planted in June, when Di Risio was in New York to present the cruise collection, and took some time to study the retail floors.
“We realized that we were the only designer brand in our matrix that didn’t have a pre-fall collection in the store at that time,” Guadagno said. “It was clear that we were missing an entire window of deliveries.”
“I put together a product strategy that identified the bestsellers by classification,” Guadagno added. “In addition, we augmented a price segmentation into opening, middle and top price points. Thirdly, to identify a core offering that didn’t exist before, we identified the key silhouettes we could evolve over time. It was coordinating the deliveries and targets for the floor. For the first time, it can now be on the floor June 1.”
In the U.S., Versace is sold in 80 doors, up by about 30 percent from the previous year. Its accounts include Neiman Marcus, Barneys New York, Saks Fifth Avenue and Nordstrom. About 50 percent of the doors that carry the ready-to-wear also sell the accessories, which are quickly turning into a serious business in the U.S. “We are a rtw house and that’s our core business,” Guadagno said. “Accessories are fairly new to us, and we have greater growth in the area than we had projected. We have identified our own signature look with the Couture Limited Edition bag. We are very committed to growing the accessories business.”
Guadagno, who joined Versace from D&G last year, said the U.S. has seen an uptick in business during the past few months — a fact he credits to several factors, including well-received collections, a widening of price points to offer a friendly entry level and the creation of a team in New York to oversee sales, distribution, marketing and communication for the U.S.
“I think we have achieved a lot in the last year,” Guadagno said. “We have created a new culture in the first year by bringing in talented people and their expertise. Also, for the first time, there is an important exchange with Milan. Right now, it’s like a new platform, a new playing field.”